Chip shots from the local girls prep golf scene

Ran across a couple of interesting stories last week covering back-to-back days of girls high school golf invitationals at Grand Island's Jackrabbit Run Golf Course.

Last Thursday at the Grand Island Central Catholic Invitational, Doniphan-Trumbull's Danielle Lemek continued her early domination of the Class C golf scene by shooting a 3-over-par 75 to make it 2-for-2 for her in major tournaments this fall.

As if that wasn't impressive enough, consider that Lemek is a freshman. Among classmates, Lemek is known as "The Freshman Phenom."

Lemek's emergence onto the scene isn't a huge surprise to those familiar with the Nebraska women's amateur golf scene. Last June at Indianhead Golf Club in Grand Island, Lemek finished fourth in the NAWAGA women's state stroke-play tournament. The only players to place ahead of Lemek have college golf experience in Grand Island Senior High graduates Megan Bartlett (Wichita State) and J.C. Stevenson (Nebraska) as well as Lincoln Pius X coach Steph Kolbas.

Bartlett said she was very impressed with Lemek. Playing with the youngster in the second round of the women's state stroke play event, Bartlett said Lemek was consistently driving the ball 10 to 20 yards past her.

Last Friday saw the continuation of another interesting story at the Grand Island Senior High Invitational. Islander senior Hannah Huston tied for ninth individually (she finished 11th after a scorecard playoff), which might not sound all that impressive, but then consider that Huston played volleyball for the first three years of her high school career.

Huston said she does come from a golfing family and used to play the game casually a few times per year -- as long as the weather was good. However, at the start of last summer, the Islanders' No. 1 player decided she was going to concentrate on golf and her hard work has shown up so far on the local links.